The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (53 page)

When informed of the death of his child by his Polish mistress, Marie Naryshkin, he burst into tears in front of his officers. A few days later, he began to travel feverishly all over Russia and covered three thousand miles in four months – an achievement that arouses no astonishment nearly two centuries later but which, in those days of bumpy carriages and roads full of potholes, was a considerable feat. Back in St Petersburg in November 1824, he witnessed a major disaster: the river Neva flooded half the city. When he heard a man crying desperately, “It’s a punishment for our sins”, he replied, “No, it’s a punishment for my sins”.

Revolt was everywhere. Pushkin said, “Holy Russia is becoming uninhabitable”. The Tsar’s favourite aide-de-camp died, and the Empress fell ill; Alexander felt that his life was falling apart. And when the Empress decided to try to recuperate in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, the Emperor announced that he would go with her. People were puzzled about the choice of Taganrog, which was not a health resort but a small fortress town in wild and swampy country. Why did she not choose Italy?

Before the Emperor set out from the capital, he attended a service at a monastery, then spent some time with an old hermit who was greatly revered. They had a long talk, and when Alexander left he remarked, “I have heard many sermons, but none has moved me as much as that old monk. How sorry I am not to have known him sooner”.

He went to Taganrog, and the Empress – whose illness prevented her from hurrying – arrived ten days later. For a month they lived simply and peacefully together, and it seemed that their love had achieved an Indian summer. Then Alexander was again seized by his wanderlust and set out on a tour of the Crimea. When he returned to Taganrog on 16 November, he was feverish.

And, according to the history books, he died there on 1 December 1825. Four eyewitnesses vouch for it: the Empress herself, his aide-de-camp, Prince Volkonsky, his personal physician, the Englishman Sir James Wylie, and the court physician, Tarassov. So why should we not accept this as the truth?

To begin with, because the diaries and letters of the witnesses contradict one another; for example, one says he is getting steadily worse, while another states that he is feeling much better and is gay and smiling. One thing that is certain is that the Tsar consistently refused all medicines during his last illness.

23 November 1825, seems to have been the crucial day. In the morning, after sleeping well, the Tsar sent for his wife and remained in conversation with her for about six hours. They were evidently discussing something of considerable import. She wrote to her mother: “When you think you have arranged everything for the best, there comes an unexpected trial which makes it impossible for you to enjoy the happiness surrounding you”. Happiness, when her husband was seriously ill? Does it not sound, rather, as if she is now certain that he is recovering and that after their reconciliation, she is now looking forward to a new and intimate relation with her husband – and then, suddenly, some new obstacle has arisen that has dashed her hopes? Could it be that her husband has confided to her that he sees this illness as an opportunity to put into practice his scheme of “disappearing”?

Moreover, after writing this letter, there is a sudden gap in her diary. Paleologue suggests that the diary entries were destroyed by Tsar Nicholas I – Alexander’s younger brother – when he came to the throne. This is plausible, since Nicholas I is known to have destroyed many papers belonging to his older brother, as well as the Empress’s diary. But if the Empress had just been told by her husband that he intended to disappear, this would be a still better explanation; it is surely unlikely that she would have continued to keep her diary, with the incriminating evidence.

Another curious incident occurred. Prince Volkonsky recorded in his diary that Alexander had suggested that his illness should be made known to his younger brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, who was heir to the throne. (In fact, he declined it and allowed Nicholas to take over.) Volkonsky gave the date for this request as 21 November – then amended it to 23 November, the day of the Tsar’s long talk with his wife. It may have been a genuine error. Or it may have reflected a desire to support the story that the Tsar began to deteriorate on 23 November. That he was not in an enfeebled state is proved by the fact that after his six-hour talk with his wife, he then wrote a long letter to his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie – a highly dominant woman –
which has since disappeared
. Nicholas I later destroyed the diary of the Tsar’s mother, as well as all papers relating to Alexander’s last years. The evidence is purely circumstantial, but it certainly fits the hypothesis that 23 November was the day on which Alexander told his wife that he intended to abdicate; the day on which he relayed this news to his mother and to his aide-de-camp and physicians – with instructions to falsify their diaries.

Four days later the parish priest of Taganrog, Father Fedotov, arrived to give Alexander Communion. Four days after that, Alexander died. Is it credible that he failed to ask the priest to come again? We would expect the opposite from a man of his religious and mystical tendencies – that is, that when he believed he was dying, he would have kept the priest by him most of the time. Neither were there any last rites, such as all the previous Tsars had received. Instead, Alexander apparently died without any of the comforts of religion – which sounds as absurd as a pope dying without the final sacrament.

Ten doctors signed the autopsy report on the day after the Tsar’s death. This report provides the most positive evidence that the corpse was not that of the Tsar and that another corpse had been found during the thirty-two hours that had elapsed since his death. Alexander is reported to have died of malaria, which causes the spleen to hypertrophy. But the spleen of the corpse was quite normal. Examination of
the brain revealed that the man had suffered from syphilis. But Alexander, says Paleologue, was known to be immune to syphilis. He had had many mistresses, and his favourite mistress, Marie Naryshkin, had many lovers. His promiscuity must have led him to consult his physicians about the possibility of venereal disease on several occasions; medical reports show that he had always remained immune.

The back and loins of the corpse were brownish-purple and red; this might be expected of a peasant who took no care of his skin – or who had been recently flogged – but hardly of a Tsar.

But where could the corpse have been obtained? There is no difficulty in answering this question if we recall that Taganrog was a garrison town full of soldiers. Maurice Paleologue (who was the French ambassador at the court of Nicholas II, the last of the Tsars) reports that there is some evidence (he agrees that it is “faint”, because such matters were kept secret) that the head physician of the military hospital, Dr Alexandrovitch, happened to have in his hands the body of a soldier who was roughly the same height and size as the Tsar. If the body was that of a soldier – possibly a Tatar – it could explain why the skin of the loins and back was purple; soldiers were often beaten.

Oddly enough, Dr Tarassov, the royal surgeon, later declared that he had not signed the autopsy report. Yet the report is signed by Tarassov. Why did Tarassov think he had not signed it? Was it because he did not wish to put his name to a document he knew to be false? On the other hand, an unsigned autopsy report would confirm suspicions if any question of the Tsar’s “survival” arose, and it would therefore be logical for someone to forge Tarassov’s signature.

It is also known that when the Tsar’s remains were exposed to public view – as they had to be by custom – in the church at Taganrog, everyone who looked at the face said the same thing: “Is that the Tsar? How he has changed”.

Another curious event occurred when the coffin was on its way back to St Petersburg – or rather, to the summer palace in Tsarskoe Selo – in the following March. (In the freezing Russian winter, the body was perfectly preserved, as if it had been kept in a deep freeze.) When the coffin reached Babino, fifty miles from its destination, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna came – alone – to see it. She ordered the coffin to be opened, took a long look at the body, and then left. It seems odd that she should have made the journey to Babino when she could just as easily have seen the body in St Petersburg. It is recorded that she had recently received “a very grave confidence” from Princess Volkonsky, wife of the Tsar’s aide-de-camp. If that confidence was that the
corpse was not that of the Tsar, it would certainly explain her visit in midwinter. If we assume that the letter of 23 November had simply told her that Alexander had decided to abdicate, and the next news she received was of his death, then it becomes understandable that she was anxious to find out as quickly as possible whether it was true that her son was still alive. She did not want to see the body in the presence of other people.

Alexander was taken to the summer palace in Tsarskoe Selo, although it might have been expected that he would lie in state in St Petersburg so that his subjects could see him for the last time. Instead, only the royal family filed past the coffin in the chapel. As the Dowager Empress did so, she made the curious remark, “Yes, that is my dear son Alexander” and kissed the brow of the corpse. The body was then taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress and placed in a tomb.

Forty years later the new Tsar, Alexander II, heard the rumors that the hermit Fedor Kuzmich, who had died in the previous year, was actually Tsar Alexander I. He ordered the tomb to be opened. This was done at night, under the direction of the minister of the imperial court, Count Adlersberg. The coffin proved to be empty. The tomb was then resealed without the coffin. Paleologue records that the tomb was opened again in the reign of Tsar Alexander III and that the coffin was missing. In contradiction to this, the historian R. D. Charques records, in a footnote in his
Short History of Russia
(1956), that the coffin was opened again by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and found to be empty.

But in his introduction to Tolstoy’s
Death of Ivan Ilyich
(which contains his story “Fedor Kuzmich”), Tolstoy’s translator, Aylmer Maude, states that in 1927 the Soviet government had the imperial tombs opened and that that of Alexander I contained only a bar of lead. This sounds altogether more likely. It suggests that Paleologue’s account is the correct one and that Charques wrote
coffin
when he meant
tomb
. In fact, a completely empty coffin would not be placed in the tomb, since it would be evident to those who lifted it that it was empty; something would almost certainly be placed inside to give it weight, and that something might well be a bar of lead. When the coffin was found to be empty by Count Adlersberg, this might well have been left behind in the tomb.

Tolstoy was intrigued by the story of Fedor Kuzmich and, as already noted, sketched out a story – unfinished at the time of his death – about it. Tolstoy’s “Fedor Kuzmich” purports to be the diary of Alexander I. The protagonist describes himself as “the greatest of criminals”, the
murderer of hundreds of thousands of people as well as of his own father. In Taganrog, he says, he received a letter from his minister, Arakcheyev, describing the assassination of Arakcheyev’s voluptuous mistress; this, he says, filled him with lustful thoughts. Early the next morning he walked out alone, heard the sound of drums and flutes, and realized that a soldier was being made to run the gauntlet – that is, to run halfnaked between lines of colleagues who would beat him with rods. The thought of the murdered girl and of a soldier being beaten with rods “merged into one stimulating sensation”. He then realized that the soldier who was being beaten bore a striking resemblance to himself; it was a man named Strumenski, who was sometimes jokingly called Alexander II. He had been in the Tsar’s old regiment and was now being punished for attempted desertion. Two days later the Tsar made inquiries and learned that Strumenski was dying. It was when his chief of staff was telling him about various conspiracies that the desire to abdicate again came upon him with tremendous force, and he realized that the death of Strumenski would provide him with the opportunity he needed. And when, the following day, he cut himself badly while shaving, and collapsed on the floor, he decided that the time had come to put his plan into operation.

Tolstoy’s version assumes that Alexander decided to vanish on impulse in Taganrog; Paleologue suspects that he chose Taganrog because he had already planned his disappearance.

Oddly enough, Paleologue doubts whether Fedor Kuzmich
was
Alexander I – he cites a story to the effect that an English lord picked up the Tsar in his yacht and that Alexander died as a monk in Palestine. This is, in a sense, more logical than the notion that he became a wanderer in Russia, where he would have been easily recognized.

Many historians, including Charques, dismiss the notion that Alexander I survived his “death” in Taganrog. In
The Court of Russia in the Nineteenth Century
(1908), E. A. Brayley Hodgetts cites the report of Sir James Wylie, the Tsar’s English doctor, who examined the body and diagnosed that the death was due to “bilious remittent fever”. But if Alexander “disappeared”, then Wylie was undoubtedly part of the conspiracy. And the doubts about the disappearance theory must be balanced against the evidence of the empty tomb and against the whole strange story of Alexander’s final illness and death. It now seems unlikely that anyone will ever prove that Alexander I arranged his own disappearance. But the reason that it is unlikely – that all the relevant diaries and letters have mysteriously vanished – suggests that it is true.

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